Child Theme's Versus Pagelines Framework Direct

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cookingruthie11
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cookingruthie11 0

I have downloaded and installed iBlogPro5 and am somewhat new to why you want to use a child theme versus the framework without a child theme.
My limited understanding is that in addition to the predone design, the reason you would use a child theme is that if there is an update to the framework and you are not using a child theme you could potentially loose your settings when you install the update and the child theme itself will hold the settings you have made to it? Is this incorrect?
Here is the issue for us. We are moving from Genesis with the Blissful Child child theme to Pagelines. We wanted better control of the design and easier implementation of some of the cool features that Pagelines supports.
We liked iBlogPro5s clean design and felt it would work well for us BUT as we started into the design following the setup video we noticed the menu on the left was missing the "Color" tab. After a bit of digging we figured out that the child theme removes this because it uses preset pictures as the background. This is not going to work for us. We need the options in the "Color" tab. Thus we are now looking to either move to another child theme or just go with the framework on its own.
Could someone help us to understand the disadvantage of not using a child theme? We like iBlogPro5 aside from that one issue. The design looks great, clean, Apple like, but we want a background that is something other than just white.
Thanks in advance for your help.
Drew

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cookingruthie11
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cookingruthie11 0

I guess I should have said if there is an update to wordpress rather than the framework but I don't know... People have also told me with wordpress 3.2 they changed it so that rather than installing a totally new copy of wordpress updates only update the changed code so if it is not part of the code that actually changed the modifications you make yourself will stay unless... you change something they are modifying. You get my drift I hope...

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Rob
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Rob 547

First, there's nothing in the iBlogPro5 child theme that stops you from changing colors of anything you please. One only needs the time, patience and skills to make changes for customizations. Keeping in mind that child themes are pre-designed for out-of-the-box use, no-one is precluded from changing things and we provide documentation to help you do this, as well as tools.
The child theme concept, which has been around for a long time now, does indeed protect the design settings in the event of updates, but it's not the only means of doing so, thus if you prefer to design inside PageLines Framework without a child theme, you may do so, using PageLines Customize plugin and if you like, Base Theme. Adding CSS to Custom Code writes it to the database, which is also protected from update changes.
Reasonably, one should not be editing or modifying WordPress core files and anyone doing so, does so at their own peril. It's not an activity related to PageLines and we don't support that. Of course those WP files someone edits would be overwritten by a WP update, but again, this has nothing to do with the site design. It has only to do with site functionality coming from WordPress itself. (Forgive my personal comment here, not directed to you... but it has always amazed me how people cannot differentiate between WP and any theme, framework or platform they use, invariably confusing them.)
Could you be a bit more clear about this missing Color tab? Do you mean the Color Control tab in Dashboard > PageLines > Site Options? If you're using a pre-designed child theme, reasonably, you wouldn't need to use the settings found there. If you want a different child theme, then using Base Theme, you can design your own in any color you want. Even in iBlogPro5, you can use CSS to change colors, or edit the child theme files (style.css, etc.).